The Repopulation - Freedomtown WIP Shots

The last few blogs have been information heavy and screeshot light, so here's a slew of new screenshots of the Freedomtown zone, which is currently a work in progress.


No mobs in these shots, as the zone hasn't yet been populated. There is apparenrly a minimum 100 word limit now, so here's the most recent build notes:

General

- Fixed a rare bug that was causing crashing on loading due to the default map not existing due to a name change. Once in a while when loading the GUI wouldn't update with the new map in time and caused a crash. This has been fixed.
- We've adjusted a number of monster special abilities to get their damage or supplemental range in line with the recent combat changes.
- Increased the radius of the area that you can /clone inside of.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing NPCs set to be NoAggro to get angry at players if they attacked them manually.

Character

- Stealth is now visibly noticable. You will fade out at a level that is relative to how visible you currently are. That visibility is determined by the potency of your stealth skill, the ability or abilities used, and what stealth enhancing items you may be wearing. Players stealth skill will allow them to decrease your stealth level to them, and monsters can detect you and cause you to lose stealth depending on their ability to detect it and your distance to them.
- Stealth abilities now also work against players. Previously they only worked against NPCs. Players ability to see hidden players is determined by their own stealth skill and any item enhancement they may have.
- Going into Sneak mode will now cancel Run and Sprint.
- Going into Walk mode will now cancel Sprint, where it previously only cancelled Run.
- Adjusted the skillup rates of Dodging, Tracking, Crafting, Harvesting, Concentration and Parrying.
- Reduced the chances for your statistics to go up when you skill up.
- Increased the rate at which Tracking ticks from once every 5 seconds, to once every 3 seconds.
- Increased both the minimum tracking range and the rate at which tracking distance grows as you skill up.
- Increased the rate at which you regenerate energy while out of combat by 20%
- When you are in-combat your health and energy will increase at a reduced rate.
- When a skill increasing you will receive a green Skill Up text over your characters head in third peson mode.

Crafting

- Byna Berries are no longer obtained from Foraging, but from Gathering nodes.
- Used resource nodes will no longer display as "corpses"
- Resource nodes are now color coded in Tracking to make it easier to view them.
- Craftable items should now longer appear on NPC vendors.
- You will no longer be able to harvest resource nodes at longe range if you have a ranged weapon equipped. The range you will be able to harvest from is now properly obained from the Tool slot.
- Tweaked the skill up rate of both Crafting and Harvesting skills.
- You will no longer be able to raise your crafting skill on resource nodes that are far below your harvesting skill.
- Introduced a new tamable Lingmaa species

Items

- Reduced the skill requirement on numerous Combat Healing items.
- Rifles and Polearms are now defined as Two Handed, and can not be dual wield.
- Mallets are now two-handed weapons based on Mace tactics.
- Crafted Items are now denoted as such.
- Adjusted the rarity of Composite Armor from Uncommon to Common.
- The Painting of a Waterfall and the Painting of a Forest furniture items should now appear when placed in your home.

Quests

- Fixed an issue that was preventing Underworld quests from being given.
- Reduced the difficulty of the Simulation Bot in the tutorial.
- Fixed the "A Pick me Up" quest which was previously not properly setting the npc to deliver to.

UI

- The Mapping system has seen a number of changes. The seams no longer repeat as you cross the edges. It now supports DDS textures. It is now zoomable and you can open it up in a larger map view rather than in the smaller view if so desired.
- The skills and stats system now not only displays the text indicator of your current rating, but also displays visual bar that indicates your progress towards the next rank in that slo. The current progression of skills is: Unskilled, Poor, Below Average, Average, Above Average, Skilled, Very Skilled, Incredible, Elite, Master and Grandmaster. This is somewhat like having 11 levels for each skill, except that in between each level you are also learning progressional bonuses.
- There is now a visual representation of the mobs health underneath their name.
- You can once again see a view of your character at the login and character creation screen. This had been broken since the 1.7 port.
- Vendors and Resources now have their names coded in a differnet text color.
- Items are now color coded by their rarity.
- Hitting the Tab key selects a nearby target within your visible range. It has been modified so that it will no longer select Resources.
- When creating a new character, the UI will now properly scale in resolutions of 1280x1024 or higher. Previously it only scaled to 1024x768 and you needed to manually drag menus from there.
- The size on the scrolling damage numbers has been reduced.

World

- Added varying levels of stealth detection to different mobs. In general boss mobs and animals are harder to sneak up on than they were before.
- Tweaked various monster health, critical, energy, etc.
- Added new special abilities to most monster species.
- Added a new bestiary model and spawns to go along with it. The Lingmaa is a new animal based species that can be tamed.
- Mobs will now use their special abilities more often.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing Shang Jian Wanchun from spawning at the Body Armor shop in Plymouth.
- There are now three re-cloning locations in Plymouth. At the Cloning Facility, outside of the Plymouth Towers Housing Complex, and at Timbertol Station.
- The Control Panel and the Exit for the Plymouth Suites is again functional..
- Decreased normal mob respawn times by 20%
- Increased boss mob repawn times.